A substantial portion of present day video is captured by video cameras that utilize charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers to produce video signals requiring expensive signal processing in order for file-based video streams to be delivered to a receiving party.
For example, to encode the output of a video camera from one media facility to another facility for, e.g., a videoconference, presently known video transport methods require the output from a video camera to follow a transport path from the video camera to an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, to a master signal router, to a fiber optic encoder, to a fiber pathway, to a fiber decoder, to another master signal router, to a digital-to-analog (D/A) converter, to a streaming media file encoder, and ultimately to an IP network. It is estimated that, at the time of filing the present disclosure, state-of-the art equipment for performing the above processing between the analog camera and the IP network costs up to $100,000 (U.S.).
Similarly cumbersome and expensive is the video transport path required for funneling the output of multiple security cameras to a centralized monitoring center. The video transport path for the video signals from such analog cameras begins at the respective monitoring cameras and proceeds to an analog multiplexer, to an analog router, to a microwave or coaxial cable, to an analog router, and to an analog display. It is estimated that, again at the time of filing the present disclosure, state-of-the art equipment for performing the above processing between each of the analog cameras and the analog display costs up to $15,000 (U.S.)
Accordingly, video signal processing associated with the examples described above include translation, routing, and storage that require numerous compressions, bandwidth reductions or signal translations in order to fit the video data into various storage or transport implementations. Examples of such processing include discrete cosine transform (DCT) compression within video tape recorders (VTRs); the RGB to YUV conversion for 4:2:2; and MPEG-2 compression for DTV transmission. Up to 90% of the cost for acquiring the resulting file based video for, e.g., videoconferencing, security monitoring, or even live television broadcasting, is spent between the photon capture unit and the encoder input for the numerous signal translation and processing stages.